Since the forums aren't searchable, I thought I'd post a quick question here...

I'm mostly a PvE player, and right now, I'm pretty deception heavy, however, I'm beginning to find that style a little well, boring. Are Madness assassins any fun? I know a lot of this comes down to personal preference, but I'm just wondering if anyone out there is a Madness Assassin, I'm currently lvl 26 (about halfway to 27) and am pondering a respec. If so, I was just wondering how good Madness specced 'sins are around that level.

I think Madness is more fun. You get more spells and flashy stuff and it's a little better AoE DPS, which seems to be the theme while leveling.

Awesome, now, next question, where is the respec guy? Sorry, I'm such a noob.

There's one in the fleet.

I think Madness is more fun. You get more spells and flashy stuff and it's a little better AoE DPS, which seems to be the theme while leveling.

 

Actually, from talent trees only Deception gets 3 new skills, while Madness only 2.

 

@OP

If you want to play as Madness I think you should wait with the switch for when you have enough points to reach Raze, cause it makes this spec really nice.

I havent quite grasped why people say that Deception is the levelling spec, at least initially.

 

Untill level 20 the only damage boosting abilities you get is Duplicity and Recirculation, and both are, at least to me, not that good, compared to what Madness brings. Then you get Suging Charges at 20, which seems ok.

 

Madness gives you a flat 9% crit chance increase when any of your spells crit with Exploitive Strikes. With Crackling Charge you increase the damage of the Lightning Charge Discharge by 16% which is quite alot when you look at the base damage of it. You get Chain Shock while grants you a second half power Shock 45% of the time. and you get to lower the Force charge of Thrash and Shock as well, plus you get Deathfield.

 

I level using madness, and it works fine for me both when acting as a DPS or when tanking.

With Khem tanking Duplicity give great dmg boost to Maul, which you can use very often, Dark Embrace grants a little bit of early dmg boost and Surging Charge Discharge hits very hard. So it's quite strong from the beginning and it only gets better the further down the tree you go.

 

Madness also has it's merits, and the more points you get the better it gets, but still, I prefer Deception early on.

I would suggest against leveling as madness all together. Everyone says your AoE DPS goes up, because of Deathfield... Yes Deathfield is a nice AoE, but it has a rather small radius and rarely are mobs in the perfect position. Madness is based to heavily on critting with melee attacks to really work, 33% chance on crit to proc Raze which allows you to drop a free instant Crushing Darkness.

 

I've been playing as Madness for a while now. It does work well, running in Dark Charge for the PBAoE Discharge, Deathfield and then Thrash spam which clears trash mobs very quickly. But the single target power of Madness is lacking without proper crit gear. I much prefer the durability of Darkness or the raw damage of Deception.

 

Darkness seems to be the best at the moment. Tank the mobs while Revel, in AoE stance, burns everything down. And then switch him to Single Target for boss fights.